Do I Count?: Stories from Mathematics
Purchasing Options
Features
- Presents amusing and fascinating stories from mathematics at a level suitable for general readers
- Focuses on the doing and making of mathematics
- Discusses mathematical figures, including Paul Erdos and Gian-Carlo Rota
- Describes stories about prime numbers and puzzles such as Sudoku
- Explores the places where mathematical discoveries are made, including desks, libraries, beds, and beaches
Summary
The subject of mathematics is not something distant, strange, and abstract that you can only learn about—and often dislike—in school. It is in everyday situations, such as housekeeping, communications, traffic, and weather reports. Taking you on a trip into the world of mathematics, Do I Count? Stories from Mathematics describes in a clear and captivating way the people behind the numbers and the places where mathematics is made.
Written by top scientist and engaging storyteller Günter M. Ziegler and translated by Thomas von Foerster, the book presents mathematics and mathematicians in a manner that you have not previously encountered. It guides you on a scenic tour through the field, pointing out which beds were useful in constructing which theorems and which notebooks list the prizes for solving particular problems. Forgoing esoteric areas, the text relates mathematics to celebrities, history, travel, politics, science and technology, weather, clever puzzles, and the future.
- Can bees count?
- Is 13 bad luck?
- Are there equations for everything?
- What’s the real practical value of the Pythagorean Theorem?
- Are there Sudoku puzzles with fewer than 17 entries and just one solution?
- Where and how do mathematicians work?
- Who invented proofs and why do we need them?
- Why is there no Nobel Prize for mathematics?
- What kind of life did Paul Erdos lead?
Find out the answers to these and other questions in this entertaining book of stories. You’ll see that everyone counts, but no computation is needed.
Table of Contents
On the Number Line
3—Can Bees Count?
5—Can Chickens Compute?
10—And the Name of the Rose
13—Bad Luck?
42—The Answer to Everything?
91—The Numbers on the Bone
1729—Hardy’s Taxi
119/100—High Percentages
π—As Beautiful as the Mona Lisa?
√−1—Victim of a Character Assassination
χ0—The End of the Number Line?
The Never-Ending Story of Prime Numbers
Euclid Is Still Right
How Many Prime Numbers Are There?
Fermat Made a Mistake
The "Mozart of Mathematics" Makes Use of an Error
Another Search for Errors
The Mathematical Perspective
Estimates
Random Numbers
Everything Far Above Average
Integers
Caution: Equations
Equations for Everything?
The Body Mass Index
The Huntington Affair
Pythagoras Lives
Equations as Art
The Small Puzzles
Sudokus
3x + 1
The Perfect Monster
The Great Puzzles
Where Mathematics Is Created
At the Desk
At the Coffee Machine
At the Café
In the Computer
In Bed
In Captivity
In an Attic Room in Princeton
On a Beach
In a Paradise with a Library
Knowledge in the ArXiv
Research in the Internet?
The Book of Proofs
About Proofs
Concerning Errors
About Computer Proofs
Concerning Precision
Concerning Surprises
Three Legends
Mathematician vs. Mathematician
Was It Kovalevskaya's Fault?
The Disappearance of Alexander Grothendieck
What Kinds of People Are These?
Paul Erdős: Traveler
Gian-Carlo Rota: Provocateur
Persi Diaconis: Magician
Daniel Biss: Politician
Caroline Lasser: Colleague
What Mathematicians Can Do
Self-Confidence and Visions
"Unfortunately Difficult" vs. "The Right Stuff"
Record Races
You Know More Math Than You Think
"Mathematics Is …"
Read More
Index
Author Bio(s)
Günter M. Ziegler is a MATHEON professor at Freie Universität Berlin. Dr. Ziegler is a member of the executive board of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. His honors include the Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation DFG, the Chauvenet Prize from the Mathematical Association of America, and the Communicator Award from DFG and Stifterverband. His research interests connect discrete and computational geometry (especially polytopes), algebraic and topological methods in combinatorics, discrete mathematics, and the theory of linear and integer programming. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT.
Editorial Reviews
"In a book filled with humor, fascinating stories, and graceful and imaginative writing, Günter Ziegler unlocks the secrets of what mathematicians do and how they go about doing it. Along the way, he touches on the making of mathematics as an analogue of the making of love, and talks about such things as number superstitions, prime numbers old and new, interesting mathematical characters dead and alive, and some intriguing mathematical questions, questions that can be understood by virtually anyone, but which mathematicians are still trying to answer. This is a book that everyone can enjoy—from someone who failed high school geometry to the practicing mathematician. Ziegler’s knowledge about the ins and outs of mathematics is inexhaustible."
—Jacob E. Goodman, Founding Editor, Discrete & Computational Geometry
"For Ziegler, it’s a fact that doing math is a tough, sometimes dirty, business, but also brings incredible amounts of fun."
—Der Tagesspiegel
"… [the author] succeeds, in his own way, to give an idea of what drives mathematicians, what fascinates them, and where they develop their research. The portraits of colleagues whom he knows personally and whom he describes engagingly and animatedly contribute to this substantially."
—Wolfgang Blum, Sueddeutsche Zeitung
"‘Caution, formulas,’ Ziegler warns us and advises not to take everything that’s expressed as a formula as true, rather, to cheerfully and carefully look for errors. This book invites the reader to look at numbers skeptically, examine statistics carefully, and check over other people’s calculations. The author offers this encouragement, ‘We can’t all be below average in mathematics.’"
—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"Many consider mathematics as difficult. But it is precisely that which makes it interesting for Günter Ziegler, professor of mathematics and recipient of many awards, … who is here starting a ‘charm offensive’ for his discipline. His blazing argument for the field is spiced with anecdotes and true stories, bringing to the fore its multiplicity and the variety of the people who devote themselves to it."
—c’t
